Darkship Thieves

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  Well, all our ancestors had looked much the same when young, and there were holos of them with various dignitaries around the world. I hadn't activated them all, of course. It got boring after a while. Just enough to think that yeah, all Good Men Sinistras were sawed-off bastards, hewn from the same olive-colored block.

  The thing was, in all my exploring of this office before, I'd been very careful not to do anything that might leave a mark. After all it was important that Daddy not know anything here had been touched. So I'd edged around the junk—I'd planned to throw it all away when I inherited, until I remembered that I'd never be shown this office, my husband would—and played with it, but I'd never touched the desk in the center, where Daddy Dearest's backup cube sat. That desk had all locked drawers. Old-fashioned locks. Really old-fashioned. With keys.

  Of course I could pick the locks, or, by preference and considering how in a hurry I was, smash them. But it would be hard to do so and not leave traces.

  Right now I didn't care about leaving traces though. I started by turning on his cube. It came on—the holographic display glowing above the desk and the letters input password glowing midair. I glared at it as I tried to think. If I were Daddy, and thank all the gods in the various heavens I was not, what would I have used for a password?

  Evil seemed an unlikely choice, as did Rattlesnake, for meaner than—no matter how much they fit Daddy's profile. Like me he was left-handed, and I remembered once hearing one of his friends from when he was young calling him what I got called by my broomer lair: Lefty. I tried Lefty but all I got was a red glare and Incorrect.

  Right. I squinted at the glare and on impulse tried my mother's name, Elena. The glare came again Incorrect. I ground my teeth. It figured he wouldn't even use her for a password. What had I been thinking?

  I chewed on the corner of my lip, and tried to remember the name of Daddy's last doxy. But there were so many of them—actresses and porn stars, singers and painters—and they came on the scene so fast and vanished never to be heard from again so fast that it seemed scarcely likely he would use the name of one of them. Though it might give meaning to the idea you should change your password often.

  Well, I seemed to be interesting to him, and perhaps even loved, insofar as something like Daddy could love an external object—which of course as far as he was concerned was part of the problem. He wanted me to be an object that could be molded and bent to his will—something that was impossible. And so he often preferred to crush me or attempt to, but the vehemence with which he went about it seemed to imply he at least gave a damn.

  So I tried Athena but all I got back was the same damned red glowing denial, and, after a moment, another screen warning me that one more wrong password would trigger intrusion-prevention mechanisms and cause the whole system to erase.

  Damn it. I didn't have time for this. But I didn't know what else to do, so I turned my attention to the locked drawers. Here, somewhere, in the junk—or perhaps documents or gems—that Daddy considered too important to let an unlikely visitor to this sanctum see, might be a clue to the password.

  There were two ways to go about opening these drawers. The intrusive way and the even more intrusive way. There was no way I could get in and retain intact both the locks and the fine old oak desk. Daddy Dearest would know I'd broken in, and there was no point trying to hide that.

  Which meant, of course, that any information I obtained relating to where Kit might be held would have to be used as fast as possible. As soon as Daddy saw his violated desk, he would know that I knew where my husband was. And he would move to stop me.

  But I didn't have the time to break into the desk in a way that would leave no traces and, as good as I was at mechanics, it would take me a while to figure out how many tracers, trackers and access alarms Father's computer had. He would have many, that I knew, even in this most secret of his data storage machines.

  So I decided to throw caution to the winds and cast about for a likely implement to open the drawer with. I found a letter opener—or at least I thought that's what they were called in old holos—from the twenty-first, its silver handle stained and lackluster, engraved with the initials AMS. Which probably stood for Alexander Milton Sinistra, the two names having made a back-and-forth in the males of the line for centuries.

  Above the handle, the knifelike top was thick and looked like some form of steel. It would do. If it failed, I'd use the burner, but there was a good chance of setting fire to the whole setup with the burner, and the dagger—though slower—at least wouldn't burn the contents of the desk.

  I started with the top left-hand drawer. All right. This is perhaps just my understanding of things, but it had been my experience that the top drawers tended to contain most personal artifacts, and also that the one that accumulated most personal stuff that might be close to a putative heart—in Daddy's case, I wasn't willing to stipulate that he had one—was the one of the dominant hand. Which for Father was the left one.

  So I went after it with a vengeance—or rather, with a letter opener. Fortunately the blade proved as sturdy as I hoped. I dug around the lock—it was guaranteed to have the sort of key that couldn't be faked by wiggling something in it—throwing chunks of oak to the floor with mad abandon. It seemed to take forever, but I don't think it did, as I was digging as fast as I could. And as soon as the wood was weakened enough, I hit hard at the lock with the heel of my palm.

  It took two hits, but the remaining wood splintered and the lock caved inward.

  The drawer was almost empty. It contained two small boxes and a holo-picture storer probably of twenty-first-century vintage. I frowned at that, because . . . my father is not sentimental. At least he's not sentimental in the way other people are sentimental. I suspect if you started talking about injustices he suffered and how the world done him wrong, you might be able to induce a shine of tears in his eyes. But anything else, including describing the unjust death of a million babies or butterflies or anything else would be met with a stony glare and perhaps an enquiry as to why you were wasting his time.

  The twenty-first-century holo couldn't possibly be his. It had to be his ancestor. So why keep it, much less keep it in a secret drawer and not with the piles of junk all around? I mean, it was marvelous enough he never threw away his ancestors' mementos, but maybe that was pride in his ancestry. The idea that he would cherish a holo of an ancestor this much, though, struck me as odd.

  Curiosity overcoming everything else, I propped the holo on the desk and flipped its turn-on level, fully expecting it not to work. Replacing batteries in these was insanely expensive and difficult, as they used power technology different from ours. However, the holo came up promptly, if faded, and I stared at the image, uncomprehending.

  It showed . . . three young men. One of them I would say was Father as a young man—but then as I said, it could be any of my male ancestors as young men. Females just didn't seem to leave an imprint on the line at all. The other two people . . . The center one was the same figure as in Doctor Bartolomeu's treasured holo. Jarl Ingemar. The third one . . . I squinted at the holo, thinking he looked awfully familiar, until the eyes, staring at me out of the narrow, olive-colored face, beneath unruly dark hair fell in place. I'd last seen them staring at me from among a nest of wrinkles. Doctor Bartolomeu Dias.

  They looked very young—like young men on vacation, against a blue-sky and green mountains background. My fath—No, my ancestor leaned on Jarl on one side and Doctor Bartolomeu leaned on him on the other, using him as a sort of prop by virtue of his great height. They wore loose white shirts and tight black pants and looked very much like they'd been caught in the midst of a relaxed moment.

  My mind hissed, fizzed and popped, refusing to figure out what this could mean. If Doc Bartolomeu and Jarl had been Mules . . . If they had known my ancestor . . . But my ancestor couldn't be a Mule because he'd had kids. But . . . My head hurt.

  I stared at the holo, then at the holo floating above Daddy's computer d
emanding a password.

  No.

  But . . . I had one more chance. Right. I gritted my teeth and dug into the desk for the other two boxes. One of them contained three data gems. The other . . . The other contained a single, broad gold ring, unremarkable in all but the fact that it was obviously made of gold and therefore expensive. The inside was engraved with Je reviens in flowery script.

  I couldn't breathe. It was as though I'd been kicked in the stomach by a kangaroo. I realized my own ring, which had had a matching inscription, was missing, but why did it have a matching inscription? It was the same as in the collector ships' insignia, the same as the name of the ship that had taken the Mules out of the system—stopping in Eden on the way. Je reviens. I return.

  But who returned and where?

  Right. In situations like this, thinking till I got sick seemed a waste of my time. Thinking wasn't what usually got me out of trouble. Force was.

  I looked at the other drawers. It would take long to break into all of them. And the thing here was that I had no idea where Daddy was or when he'd come back. I sighed, as I started, with desperation, hacking at the space around the lock on the bottom left drawer—almost certainly a drawer designed to contain papers and documents.

  Then I looked up at the screen. It was unlikely, not to say impossible, that I would find a gem or a paper marked with Milton Sinistra's passwords. So whatever I found, I would have to guess at.

  I bit my lower lip. Well. You know, the one thing out of place that I'd already found was that very odd picture. Oh, don't get me wrong, Daddy was as proud of his ancestors as they came, but he had never, to my knowledge, kept sentimental pictures of his long-dead forefathers in a locked desk. So it must be a clue.

  The question, I thought, was first or last names, and in what order?

  Well, sooner or later I was going to have to try it, and if it destroyed the files that was entirely too bad. If I couldn't get in, it would be just as useless to me. And sooner or later, I was going to have to take a chance.

  Right. Sometimes you just have to say what the hell? So I typed into the keyboard—AlexanderJarlBartolomeu. The order the young men were in from left to right.

  For a second, nothing happened, and then there was a sound like a subdued paff and a red light flashed. "Destroying all secret files to protect from intrusion."

  Fuck. Knowing Daddy as I did, I got up from the desk, and backed away as far as possible. Which was good, because I heard a sound from under the desk and a dart lodged in the chair. It didn't look like it would have killed me—of course. If I knew Daddy, he was trying to make the intruder sleep, so that he could later interrogate him or her at length. After all, one's inner sanctum should not be violated.

  Two seconds later the hiss started. And I knew that hiss. It was gas being pumped into the chamber. Also, though at this point it couldn't possibly have an effect on me yet, I could smell the traces in the air. It was a gaseous variety of Morpheus.

  In hell he'd get me this way. I was already on my feet, and shoving among the various things, trying to find something, anything, that would help me out of here.

  I was fairly sure going back out through the office would be suicide. Or through the rest of the house. They would be looking for me.

  None of them would be so stupid as to think I'd got into the office—which I was sure they'd managed to get into by now—and vanished. So they would be trying to figure out where I'd gone, and my sudden reappearance would be treated with joy. Uh . . . short-lived joy for me. Though possibly not literally. It's not like Daddy had ever tried to kill me. But he would make me wish to die.

  With the sickening stench of Morpheus growing thicker in the air, I tried to think of a way out. This room had no windows. And I had to get out.

  Of course, I knew, from my ability to reason spatially, that this room was located at the corner of the house, with the corridor on the other side. And that corridor had a series of windows, looking out over the sea.

  The question was . . . how solid was the interior wall?

  Most people make the mistake of thinking that walls are impenetrable barriers. Unless they are external walls, built of stone and brick, very few are.

  Since from what I could remember in my mental picture of the place, this was not a load-bearing wall, there was a good chance it was made of—at best—wood.

  A quick tapping confirmed this. Not hollow, but built of wood. Right. Which meant I needed something to tear through it, and quickly.

  Madly, I tore around the room, tossing aside ostrich eggs, sheet music, old theater programs and other irrelevant souvenirs. Surely in their negotiations with native peoples, potentates and mad dictators, some of my ancestors had been given war maces or axes, no matter how ceremonial.

  I tossed things aside, rapidly, opening and closing closet doors. Inside one such door, I found a broomer suit—top-of-the-line insulated leather—and a broom, too, a branded broom, Egalitaire, which had been a popular brand fifty or sixty years ago. Top of the line in its time, and in fact so well built that its value had gone up as a collectible.

  I didn't have time to change, but I'd be damned if I was going to pass that up. Supposing I got out of here, both of these would be useful. The compartment contained a backpack with the initials MAS—who knew Daddy had been a broomer once upon a time? But the time frame and the initials were right. I shoved the suit and broom in the backpack, then the two boxes and the holo from the desk drawer.

  I'd just found, in a corner, what looked surprisingly like a bayonet, when I heard a crackle as of radio engaging, and a voice sounded, above me.

  "Athena."

  It sounded like Zeus Pater in a fury. It was at least Pater. Mine. In a bad mood.

  I turned, bayonet in hand, and looked at an oversized image of Daddy Dearest, floating above the desk. Bastard. Utter bastard. The thought that he probably had cameras around here came to mind. And that he probably had other weapons that he could use against me, too. Targeted ones, unlike the gas.

  Right. I was planning to use the bayonet to open the rest of the drawers before the gas got to the point I had to use it to hack my way out. But the thing is, if I started hacking at the wall, Daddy would have his servants on the other side before I could get out.

  Right. There was only one thing to do. I smiled sweetly at Father and said, "Hello, Daddy. Having fun torturing my husband?" And then I told him what I was going to do to him when I caught him. He interrupted me after the second time I mentioned castration.

  "I only have one set, Athena."

  "I'll make you regrow a pair so I can cut it off again," I said.

  He shook his head. "Dear girl," he said softly. "You don't understand. If you want to keep your monstrous paramour alive, you'll do what I say. You will, right now, sit in that chair, let the gas take its effect, and wait till I come home."

  "Oh, Daddy Dearest, you're the one who doesn't understand. If you touch a single hair on Kit's head . . . I'll . . . I'll commit suicide."

  I didn't know where the threat came from, but as I said it, I saw the expression of panic on Father's face, and I grinned. "Right. I have, on me, enough poison to kill myself and to ensure the process can't be reversed. And that you can't harvest any eggs."

  "You're bluffing," he said, but his eyes looked like quiet, unimaginable panic. Oh, how sweet. Now I knew what to do. I'd hold all little Sinistras hostage. No Athena, no future for Daddy's line. Look how scared he was.

  "Wanna try it?" I asked. "I suggest you stop the Morpheus now."

  Like that, the hiss stopped, as if it had been turned off by a switch, which it probably had. That thing about Father not being a fool probably meant he had manual overrides for everything here.

  I quickly calculated strategy, which at that point was like doing quadratic equations in my head, but not nearly as much fun. I could tell Daddy to let me come out through his office and pull all his servants away. Oh, I could. Except if I were Daddy I would make sure there was someone out ther
e, ready to hit me with a tranquilizer dart. Had to really, or he risked losing control over me, which was at least almost as bad as having me commit suicide.

  If I were Daddy I'd figure out a way to do it. So, he would too.

  My only other choice was . . .

  I smiled at Daddy, grabbed the chair from the desk. It was solid with a dimatough frame. Oh, good. As hard as I could, making use of all the strange strength I could command at these times, I flung it at a blank space of wall, above a low cabinet.

  The wall cracked and splintered, opening fissures. Nothing large enough for me to pass, but that wasn't needed, not really.

  I climbed on a small table nearby, then leapt at the wall, feetfirst. It was weakened enough to splinter in all directions, under the impact. I went through and landed on my feet atop debris. From behind me, Daddy Dearest howled, "Athena!"

  I confess that while assessing the situation—a vacant corridor, with a window on either end, one of the ends no more than ten feet away from me—I looked over my shoulder and told Daddy what I wanted him to suck. The fact that I didn't have one didn't make the slightest difference.

  Now alarms started sounding here too, and I could hear approaching feet. No way I could make it out of here through the mansion. No way in hell. It just wasn't possible.

  So that left the window. I opened it and looked out. It gave over a cliff, and then the sea far below. The problem was that the cliff wasn't exactly as sheer as it should be. Less than two floors down, there was a protruding ledge.